SCIENCE
Rose brings home the AuBY VIOLET NOE ON FEBRUARY 21, 2014
Early Saturday morning, Feb. 15, while many students were sleeping in, exhausted from Valentine dinners and chocolate indulgences, some dedicated Rose students were at ECU mixing chemicals and launching bottle rockets for the 2014 regional Science Olympiad tournament.
With 23 different events in which to participate, ranging from rocks and minerals to compound machines, Science Olympiad offers numerous opportunities for students to expand their knowledge of science, technology, engineering and math well beyond the scope of the classroom. “I think [Science Olympiad] exposes students to areas of science they may not have explored originally,” science teacher Heather Smith said. “So a student that may not know anything about physics gets in a physics event and finds out they really like it.” During the tournament, Rose students put their scientific skills and knowledge to the test as they competed against 14 other teams. Three teams represented Rose in the competition; two JV teams and one varsity team. Sophomore Miranda Weakley was a member of one of the JV teams. “My favorite event is designer genes, which is about heredity and biology,” Weakley said. “I also really like forensics; I’ve done that event for the past few years.” In events such as designer genes and forensics students are given a test. They must travel to different stations or perform lab procedures in order to answer the questions. Students are often allowed to bring notes to refer to during these events. “I prepare for my events by visiting the [Science Olympiad] website,” Weakley said. “I read the different resources on the website and take notes on anything that I think is important.” Other events require students to design and build devices prior to competition day. Junior Kabir Mohammed enjoys these building events the most. “Elastic launch glider is my favorite event; The goal of elastic launch glider is to get your airplane to stay in the air for as long as possible,” Mohammed said. “You make a big launcher, basically a giant wooden thing that uses a rubber band to shoot an airplane into the air; I make paper airplanes to launch.” Still there are other events that students simply can not prepare for. “Mystery Architecture is [where] you go into the event and you are given a random set of materials and you’re given a novel task and you don’t know what [the task] is going in,” Smith said. “Today’s task was, given the materials you had at your desk, to build the tallest freestanding tower. I think that pulls in a lot of design ideas and requires you to be creative as well as know the science and engineering behind your structure.” As a result of the countless hours spent planning and preparing for the events by both students and coaches Heather Smith and Jed Smith, all three Rose teams did exceptionally well. The varsity team finished first in the varsity category.The JV one team finished first and the JV two team finished second in the JV category. Rose will advance to the state tournament to be held on Apr. 25 and 26 at NC State University. The impact of the competition on the participating students goes well beyond medals and trophies. “I think being involved in any type of academic extracurricular activity, whether it be Science Olympiad or mock trial or a math competition really allows you to not only explore that particular topic in depth but allows you to see the topic outside of the classroom,” Smith said. “A lot of times what you learn through an extracurricular competition is way more valuable than what we learn in the classroom.” HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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